Disclaimer: Wow, I drafted this post in 2013 and with a few tweaks finished it tonight. It is most def not an all encompassing guide to social media, that game is vast, but it’s a good start for people that are dormant in this arena.

Although I’m not a qualified social media consultant by any stretch of the imagination, I’ve been involved in setting up, running and expanding a couple of company’s and community’s social media presences online. With that being said, herewith some of the basics I use when setting an entity up from scratch (circa 2013).

As Microsoft homer, I’m definitely going to recommend going to www.outlook.com and registering an email address. I find the email functionality, coupled with Office Online, Onedrive and Calendar functions a charm to use.

Once you have your email sorted, example my_company@live.com, it’s time to move onto your twitter feed.

So step one is to register your new twitter account by using the email address you have just created. Try your best to keep your twitter username short, but descriptive. Remember you only have 140 characters to tweet with, so having a loooooooonnnnnnnnnnggg twitter handle, will make tweeting difficult. So I suggest a little abbreviation for example @my_comp considering your full company name is my_company.

So, once you’ve registered the account, you can customise your page via settings (stick to the basic themes, don’t bezerk with too many add-ons.) After you’ve done this, its important to follow accounts or people relevant to what you are doing and in the same industry. This will expose your account to them and also give you insight into what is going on.